The Eternally Cursed
by trinfaneb
Summary: Casca the Eternal Mercenary comes gunning for one of the Scoobys and gets a bigger battle than he bargained for. Book crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer--COMPLETE
1. Prologue and Chapter 1

This is a crossover with Casca the Eternal Mercenary from the series of books written by the late Barry Sadler in the 70s and 80s. Mr. Saddler was a Green Beret in Vietnam and wrote and sung the popular "Ballad of the Green Berets" song. Enough of Casca's origin and some of his adventures are mentioned in the story for you to get an idea of his background, but you can find more info at pjfarmer dot com in the Wold Newton Chronology Central section. 

All characters are the intellectual property of their respective creators, film companies, etc.; this story may not be sold or distributed on a profit-making basis. I welcome free distribution of the story, but please let me know if you are going to do it.

Prologue

Some time ago in China I chanced to be passing a graveyard and saw the body of a young girl being buried by a grieving and prosperous family. For some reason the memory has lingered in my mind. These days I look back and wonder if she had been some ordinary girl or if she had been the Chosen.

The Eternally Cursed

Excerpts from the unpublished "Chronicles of Casca" memoir

I was getting my virtual butt kicked in the demo version of online Blackhawk Down by the -oZi- squad when I got the call. "Damm those guys are good," I muttered as I took off my headset and picked up the phone. When I put it down five minutes later I had a job. 

I hadn't accepted many missions since the bloodbath in Africa, but my go-between's tale of a blood feud going back to the Boxer Rebellion had me intrigued. Blood vengeance is an old companion of mine and I was a stage where I'm feeling nostalgic about the 1900 rebellion. You see, I had been there.

Six weeks later I was in a van with my night vision binoculars trained on a darkened house in Sunnydale, California. My eight man team and I had swept the city for a few weeks until we had finally spotted the target crossing a street and going down an alley. It looked like he had been carrying a body. By the time all of us had converged on the target, he had entered a house. 

We set up a perimeter around the house and swept it with military heartbeat sensors. This was my first time using the new technology in the field and my principal had payed a pretty penny for us to obtain them on the black market, but we had tested them extensively and they worked well within the specified parameters. There were no heartbeats detected within the house. That was logical given that our target was a vampire and didn't have a beating heart.

We camped on the house on thirty minutes as I weighed the options. No heartbeats meant no living persons in the house. We didn't have to worry about civilian casualties. The main worry was that there might be more vamps in the house. It was far better to corner the target in the house where his mobility was limited, so I gave the "engage, engage" command over my throat mike.

We left a guard at the front and back of the house and entered the residence with two teams. I was in the front breach team and we battered the door down with the ram and swept each room until we met the other team. He wasn't in any of the rooms, so that meant he had to be in the attic or basement. I left a man to cover the front and rear doors and dispatched a two man team to search the attic. The attic was clear, so five of us went down to the basement. 

We were hit just as the point man reached the bottom of the stairs. The first two men were hurled into the air before we knew what was happening. I tried to get a shot in using my taser as the target came at me with blinding speed, but he knocked it out of my hand and threw me halfway across the basement. 

The fourth man did connect with his taser, but the target was still able to grab the man's arm and break it. The vampire was kneecapping the fifth man when I put a tranc dart into him. The point man recovered and put another dart on target and the vampire finally went down. 

We secured the target with cuffs on wrists and ankles, worked on the wounded, and took them out to the vans. I was policing up evidence in the basement when I heard a couple of muted thumps sound from the upstairs. I sent one of the two men guarding the target up the stairs to check on the disturbance as I tried to find out what was going on using the comm. 

"Status report. What's the noise."

The back door sentry hissed back, "We have multiple hostiles in the house. At least two men down." I heard the thud of a knife hitting home in a body and didn't hear anything else.

"We're about to get visitors," I said to the man in the basement with me as I pulled out my silenced 9mm beretta. "I'll take the first wave coming down the stairs and you take the second while I reload."

We didn't have long to wait. Within seconds a black robed figure was coming down the stairs with a knife in his hands. I gave him and the two that followed double taps to the head. It didn't look like the losses were slowing down this mob, so I switched to single head shots. Still I popped my 15 rounds within a minute.

"Reloading." I called to my partner and dug into a pocket for another clip. Un-noticed the vampire had woken up and used his legs to sweep my partner off his feet. I reloaded and shot two of the black robes before the gun was knocked from my hand by a third. Then I blocked a strike and grabbed my knife and punched it into his ribcage, but another one plunged his pigsticker into me from behind. Painfully I twisted around and buried my gerber in his chest. There was something odd about his eyes. Then I got mobbed and felt several more knife impacts and then blackness.

I woke up and it was still black. I felt bodies above and below me and dirt dribbled into my mouth when I tried to take a breath. I realized that the only oxygen I had was what was in my lungs when I had taken the knife wounds before. I think one of my lungs had been punctured then. I frantically tried to push my way out of the grave, but there was too much weight above and I didn't have enough air. Blackness again.

The next time I opened my eyes, I could see dirt, but I was able to breathe out my nose. Someone had lain me face down on the basement floor next to the bodies of my men. I heard a man and a woman talking.

"No bite marks," the man said. "At least I didn't sire them."

"But why did you kill them and what's the deal with the big pile of bloody black robes and weapons at the bottom of the hole?" said the woman. She sounded young.

"I don't remember although I'm getting flashes of killing most of my sires. And knives aren't my style. Wait a second. One of them is alive. I can hear his breathing." I felt hands turning me over and then I was looking into the target's face. I was still too weak to fight, so I prepared for the blackness again.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Surprisingly the vampire or the blonde-haired woman didn't harm me. They just tried asking me questions. Given the strength of the vampire, I decided my best course of action was to stay silent and wait for an opening when I could escape. This mission was a scrub, but somehow I would have my revenge on the vampire and the black robes.

"Well this wanker isn't dead after being stabbed six or seven times and being buried in a hole, so I wager he's something more than human," the target said.

"Yes. We need to take him home and sort things out. I really wish we could find Giles. He would know more about the thrall you were under and Mr. Hardtokill over there."

They made me help the vampire rebury the bodies of my men and then they tied my hands up in the front, draped a jacket over them to make them less conspicuous and led me out of the house. I guess they hadn't found the cuffs. We walked about a klick before we came to a white house with a boarded up front window.

They led me into the house where a teenager and an attractive brunette and redhead greeted them. A black haired male wearing a tool belt was making repairs. It looked like a tornado had torn through the house. They exchanged stories as they sat me down in a chair and tied my hands to the arms of the chair. They were obviously amateurs. This set-up wouldn't hold me for long. All I needed was to wait for the right time.

The blonde said that the vampire had called her to the killhouse where something had taken over his body and tried to use his risen sires to kill her. But she had taken care of the vampires and broken the target out of his spell. She called him Spike. I upwardly revised my threat estimate of the blonde. 

She also said that they had seen some more freshly turned earth and had dug up nine bodies, including mine. They had also found at least twenty bloody, tattered black robes and assorted weapons and gear at the bottom of the hole. She finished up the story and took the vampire up the stairs.

That night I heard talk of the teenager fighting evil appliances and talking with the spirit of her dead mother and the redhead being egged on to kill herself by some sort of ghost. I began to match names to the faces. The blonde was Buffy, the teenager her sister Dawn, the redhead Willow, the brunette Anya, and Xander was the tool man. Their stories seemed very odd, but then again my story was pretty odd too.

At various points all of them tried to get me to talk, but I stayed silent and didn't look them in the eyes. There was constant traffic through the living room all night and someone was always awake watching me, so I bided my time. In the morning the redhead went out to get some blood for the vampire. When she came back she had a short blonde-haired man in tow. It was obvious that he was also a prisoner. They took him upstairs and Dawn stayed to watch me. 

After awhile I heard the brunette yelling and a thump on the floor. They were probably playing "good cop, bad cop." When I was young it had been "bad centurion, worse centurion." I heard a loud crash and then a couple more thumps on the floor. Then the blonde carried the vampire down the stairs and into the basement. She or someone else had worked him over pretty good. 

It was now evening and I felt pretty hungry, but didn't want to ask for something to eat. The blonde took a clothe and a bowl down to the basement. A few minutes later black robed figures came crashing through the front door and window. The redhead went down but the teenager kept them from finishing Willow for a half a minute until she too went down. A black robe was raising his knife hand for the killing blow, but by that time I was on my feet and flying into him. The fall to the floor broke the chair into kindling. 

I did a leg sweep to knock a black robe to the floor and then chopped his windpipe and took his knife and slammed it into the other black robe's chest. I got to my feet, blocked a knife thrust, and threw a black robe to the ground using a judo sweep. Another one knifed me in the back, but I gave him a sharp back hand and kicked him in the crotch and then gutted him. Another one came running down the stairs and bowled me over on his way out the door.

As I was slowly making my way to my feet, the blonde came down stairs. 

"Dawn, Willow are you alright?"

"Yeah we are," Dawn said rubbing the back of her head. "Thanks to him."

Buffy gave me a long look and then walked next to me to look at one of the fallen black robes. For the first time I realized that their eyes were sewn shut somehow.

"I know these guys," she said. "I've fought them before. They're the first."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"I faced these guys when they tried to make Angel kill himself, "Buffy continued. "What were they doing here though? Oh no, they were after Spike."

"You're coming with me," she said, pushing me towards the basement. As I went down the stairs I saw a large hole in the cinderblock the wall and a set of empty chains and manacles. The redhead and the teenager followed us down the stairs. 

"We need to know what they want with Spike," Buffy said shifting her gaze from the manacles to me. "I appreciate what you did for my friends, but if you aren't going to be part of the solution, then we're going to have a problem. Are you going to talk or are we going to have to give you dirt naps until you feel like talking?"

Dawn said, "Dirt naps?"

"We'll bury him alive."

"But that'll kill him," Dawn said.

"No it won't, but I don't think he'll like it too much. What's it going to be Mr. Lazarus?"

I decided it was time to put most of my cards on the table. She had discovered my greatest fear and weakness and the black robes seemed to be her enemies too. Ever since I had been buried alive by a Chinese warlord and only saved by an earthquake I'd had nightmares about it. I still didn't trust her relationship with the vampire though.

"I'll talk."

"Good," Buffy said. "Now go over to the wall and chain yourself up. Its obvious rope won't hold you. Willow you watch him while we take care of Andrew upstairs and clean up the house a bit. I'll be back."

As I waited, I watched Willow rub her head and then pull out some trinkets and perform some kind of ritual. After a few minutes and a mismash of words in six langues I knew and two that I didn't she seemed to finish. 

"What was all that about?" I asked. "I heard the word for 'heal' in at least five different languages."

"Just a little spell to take my Excedrin-sized headache away," she answered.

"So you're a witch. I've known a few over the years." 

We didn't talk anymore until Buffy and Dawn came back down the stairs carrying a couple of folding chairs. The blonde slid one over to me and sat facing me in the other one. "Ok, now tell me your story."

"First, could you get me something to eat and drink?" I said. "I have a strong constitution, but even I start feeling a little ragged after a few days without."

"Sure," she answered. "Dawn would you please get our guest something to eat and drink?" The teenager went up the stairs. "You can start by telling me your name."

"Well the name that's on all my current official documents is Conrad Lange," I said. But I was born with the name Casca Longinus. That was over two thousand years ago. 

"You look pretty spry for a guy that old," Buffy said.

"As you guessed back at the other house, I'm something more than human, but I started out as a typical Roman legionnaire. I was posted to Judea and one of my duties was crucifying Jewish and Roman criminals."

"Oppressing the Jews, not good," Willow said.

"If it makes you feel any better, I fought with the Israelites during the Six-Day way in 1967. Also in the Second World War when I heard a Jewish freedom fighter tell me about the concentration camps and ovens I deserted the German Panzer corps on the Russian Front and made my way to Berlin and confronted Hitler about it. I shot him when I became disgusted with his answers."

"Killing Hitler, that's pretty heavy," Willow said.

"You don't know the half of it. I also killed Jesus Christ."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

I saw looks of disbelief on their faces at first and then of revulsion. That was better than I expected. The few other times I had told this story, it had mostly been laughed off.

"I didn't know who Christ was except some Jewish religious trouble-maker being put to death along with two common criminals. I was ordered to end his suffering by sticking a spear through his ribs. Right before I did that, he said to me-'Soldier, you are content with what you are. Then that you shall remain until we meet again. As I go now to my Father, you must one day come to me'. I didn't think much of it at first, but as the years wore on and I didn't age I began to suspect."

"The first I time I recovered from fatal injuries I started to figure it out. I could be injured and my heart could stop and I could stop breathing, but my body would heal and I would come back to life again."

"That's incredible," Willow said. "What happens if your head gets cut off or something?" 

"Thankfully that has never happened, although I have come close a few times. I did have my hand chopped off by a fanatic once, but a traveling companion sewed it back on for me and it healed in time. Also I had my heart cut out in an Aztez ritual and I put it back in my body and it healed."

"Eww, that image gives me the wiggins," Buffy said. "What have you been doing all these centuries?"

"Like the Man said, I've stayed a soldier and fought against or with just about every army on the planet at some point. Most times I've been a grunt but sometimes I've been a general. I've killed more men and bedded more women than I can remember."

"Then why haven't we heard of any immortal kiddies running around the world?" Willow asked.

"Either I'm naturally sterile or becoming immortal made me that way. I suppose I could try to use modern medicine to help with that, but I don't want to pass this curse onto any one else. I've had so many friends and lovers taken from me by violent death or disease and old age. After awhile I tended to try and avoid making attachments." 

"Bummer," Buffy said.

"At least it is some small consolation knowing that all my enemies will die before I do."

"May not be so true in the case of the First Evil," Willow interjected.

"Ok that explains you, now explain how you ended up at the bottom of that hole," Buffy said as she slid her chair closer to me.

"You're accepting my story that easily?"

"It's a whopper," Willow said, "but we've heard far stranger. We'll verify it later, but for now we'll take you at face value."

"Thank you," I said. "You have to understand that in the modern world, its becoming harder and harder to hide my immortality so I tend to stay out of big national armies and concentrate on smaller missions."

"That makes sense," Buffy said.

"It also keeps me off modern battlefields where you have more than a fair chance of getting blown into very tiny bits. I not sure how my restorative powers could handle that and I don't want to put it to the test. Also I have grown somewhat weary of killing people just because they are wearing another uniform. Mercenary jobs involve a lot of killing for no good reason, but occasionally I do get to go after someone truly deserving like your vampire friend Spike."

"So you were after Spike," Buffy said. "Why?"

"Money and curiosity. It seems Spike killed a Chinese girl during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and her family still remembers. One of her great, great, great cousins is a silicon valley millionaire and decided to use me to help exact revenge for his family. I don't know why this girl was special, but its not my money. I was in China during the Rebellion and wanted to see how this thing played out."

"I know why the girl was special," Buffy said. "She was a vampire slayer. Like me."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five 

At that point Dawn came back with the food and water. I wasn't in the habit of making meals out of just cookies, but I've had far worse. Between bites I asked, "What's a vampire slayer?"

"Here's the spiel," Buffy said. "Out of every generation one girl is chosen to fight the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness yadda yadda. What it boils down to is a young girl gets super strengh and fights the bad guys until she dies and the next slayer is called. We have Watchers who train and guide us and also occasionally do nasty things like leave us without our slayer powers in a house with a pyscho vampire on our 18th birthday."

"Sounds tough," I said. "How long have you been doing it?"

"Seven years."

"She's been the slayer longer than anyone else in recorded history," Willow chirped. "We're all really proud of her."

"We know why you wanted Spike, now tell us how you tried to do it and what your involvement with the First is," Buffy said.

"Like I've said I got hired to help a family exact blood vengeance on Spike. I put together an eight man team, all experienced, and put them through a couple of weeks of training while we tried to locate the vampire. Fortunately my principal...."

"Hey I've got a principal too," Buffy interrupted and then sheepishly said, "Go on."

"Fortunately my principal had good relations with a law firm that located the target in Sunnydale."

"Let me take a wild guess and say the law firm was Wolfram and Hart?" Buffy said.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"My ex-boyfriend has had some run-ins with them in LA."

"So we set up shop in Sunnydale and put cameras around the high school since that was where he was last seen. We didn't get a hit on the cameras, so we rode around the city in two man teams at night for three weeks until we spotted him carrying a body into the killhouse. We moved in and subdued the subject with two non-fatal casualties to our team. We were preparing for extraction when the black robes hit us. Spike regained consciousness and occupied one of my men for a critical few seconds. Otherwise it might have been a different story."

"What were you going to do with him after you left Sunnydale?" Buffy asked.

"Deliver him to my employer and get the bulk of my pay. I assume my principal wanted to play with his toy awhile before he broke it. I would have preferred to stake Spike on-site and film it for the folks at home, but the boss didn't want it that way."

"You knew Spike was a vampire and it didn't bother you?" Willow asked. 

"I'd heard tales of vampires and demons and even encountered a few of them before. I thought with enough manpower and the right precautions it wouldn't be a problem. Didn't count on the black robes though. Who are they and what's their beef with you?"

"They're minions of some evil power I've encountered before," Buffy said. Don't know exactly why they are after us, but it probably boils down to the basic good vs evil thingy."

"If you're a vampire slayer, then why are you protecting a vampire?" I asked.

"Spike is a special case, "Buffy answered. "He had a chip put in his head a few years ago that causes him extreme pain every time he tries to harm a human. Over the summer he went to a powerful demon, endured some trials and got his soul back"

"If he has that chip, then why was he able to attack my team?"

"We're not sure," Buffy said. "We think the first had him under some kind of thrall. Xander thinks it must use a song as a trigger to put him under that spell. Xander got the idea from the movies, but it sounds plausible."

"I don't know about songs as triggers," I said, "but I saw the Man in the Mountain brainwash his assassins with opium and the promise of paradise and I believe the Chinese used brainwashing on captured US troops during the Korean War."

"Oh I know that movie-The Manchurian Candidate," said Willow.

"I've got two questions, Slayer," I said. "Number one what are you going to do about the black robes and Spike?"

"Well we'll kill every black robe we come across. Spike we'll try and rescue and lift his trigger."

"I not so sure about the Spike plan, but I approve of killing all the black robes. I didn't let myself get close to my team, but they were still MY team. Now what are you gonna do about me?"

"I'm not sure," said Buffy as the brunette came down the stairs. "A lot of that depends on you."

Anya said, "Andrew is coming around and is ready to talk. What's the story with your guy?"

"Turns out he killed Christ and got cursed to wander the earth as an immortal mercenary," said Willow.

"That sounds familiar," Anya said. "Vengeance demons knew of him and the magnificent blood vendettas he would carry out every century or so, but we couldn't touch him because he was on the mystic do not call list."

"Vengeance demons?" I asked.

"It's a long story," said Buffy. "Let's go up stairs and see what Andrew has to say, "Casca, you sit tight and we'll deal with you later," she told me as she walked up the stairs.

Normally that would be my cue to sit back and plan how I would break free of the manacles and slit the throats of every one in the house while they slept, but this time I didn't have it in me. I still didn't know what I was going to do, but I sincerely hoped it didn't involve hurting any of these people.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The next day Buffy led an older man wearing glasses down the basement stairs.

"Hello I'm Rupert Giles," he said with a slight English accent. "We want to verify your story so could you please tell us the name of the organization that has been watching you since shortly after the death of Christ?"

"The Brotherhood of the Lamb," I answered.

"That's correct," Giles told Buffy. "The Watcher's Council always considered them the new kids on the block and pikers since most of the time they can't even keep track of one man through the ages. They were the butt of jokes."

"Yeah they were never much of a threat to me," I say. "Their leader cut off my hand once, but the worst thing they ever did to me was killing people close to me. I punished them for that. I haven't found any evidence of them shadowing me the last few decades. I guess following me so they can have a front row seat at the apocalypse just isn't as exciting for them as it used to be."

"We know you are who you claim to be now, but we still don't know your intentions towards us," Buffy said as she and Giles walked back up the stairs. "You're going to have to sit tight for awhile longer."

"I can understand that," I said while thinking to myself that much of the time I didn't know my intentions very well either.

I didn't see much of Buffy the next week or so. I heard that she got badly beaten by some kind of super vampire. Xander worked on patching up the hole in the basement. He and I talked about military history and tactics sometimes. He'd never been in the military, but he had become a soldier for one night due to an enchanted Halloween costume. His soldier memories had mostly faded away by now, but he had done some research on the subject since then. I told him some details about my life and he reciprocated by telling me more about him and his friends, especially about his relationship with Anya.

A group of young girls, ones they called Potentials, started coming down to the basement to use the training equipment Xander had put together for them. A blonde named Eve never actually trained, but she gave her mouth quite a workout. It seemed like she wanted to make the other girls more afraid than they obviously were. This behavior raised my hackles. I'd seen men executed for far less mutinous talk. But it wasn't my business, so I didn't say anything.

One evening after dusk, Buffy came storming down the stairs and confronted Eve. Up until the point when I saw the thing that was pretending to be the young blonde Potential wink out of existence I had been rationalizing to myself that this First Evil thing couldn't be as bad as everyone said it was. The First was gonna have a ball with me. 99.9% of the people I knew were dead. 

Later that evening Buffy came back down and unchained me. 

"Look we've got Bringers outside the house and the Chaka Khan vampire is on its way," She said to me. We can't leave you as a sitting target for them. We also can't let you harm us."

"I give you my word that I won't harm you or any of your people, even if they aren't really people," I said. "I owe the black robes some payback."

"Good enough for me," Buffy said.

Upstairs I saw that they had also unbound Andrew. The Slayer was handing out weapons to the Potentials. Andrew asked for one and only got a bottle of holy water. I walked over to the chest and said, "I can do a lot of damage with a sword or axe. I can help."

"I believe you can," she said tossing me a double-headed axe. "Just do what Xander and I say, ok?"

A short time later the ubervamp broke through the door and Willow put up her mystical barrier. It was obvious that the barrier wasn't going to hold, so Buffy told us to run. I led the way out the back door and, without missing a step, I sliced the head off the first Bringer I saw. I swept another one off his feet and Kennedy put a crossbow bolt in his chest.

I ran towards the alley where two more Bringers were waiting. I blocked the knife thrust of one and sent him to the ground with a spinning back kick. Dawn finished off that one as I buried my axe in the chest of the other one. I looked back towards the house and Buffy was taking down a Bringer that was about to stab Xander. All of us ran down the alley and out into the street.

Shortly afterwards Buffy separated from the group to try and lure the ubervamp away from the Potentials. We ran to a construction site and climbed down into the pit. The vampire caught up with us, but Buffy startled it by turning on the night construction lights. Everyone else was climbing up scaffolding, but I was going to stay and help Buffy fight the vamp. Xander put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come on, this is the Slayer's show."

It was the fastest and most savage fight I had ever seen. Each blow from the vampire or Buffy would probably have crippled a normal human. Buffy was getting pounded until she stuck a broken crossbow bolt into the vamp's eye. That seemed to daze it long enough for Buffy to get the upper hand and pummel it until she could garrotte it with a length of barbed wire. She pulled its head off and then I heard a whoosh sound and the vampire turned to dust.

Willow patched up a gash on Buffy's face with a butterfly bandage from the first aid kit in the construction site office trailer and then we headed to the tunnels to rescue Spike. I was hoping for another chance to kill Bringers, but there were none to greet us. From the way Buffy and Spike held each other on the walk home, I could tell they cared a great deal for each other. I still wasn't sure about Spike, but sometime on that walk home I decided it was time to play on the side of the angels.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

The next morning I was awoken by the sound of clinking chains. Spike had reclaimed the manacles and cot along the basement wall and I was in a sleeping bag on the floor. I got up and went over to the sink to splash some water on my face. I had spent a good portion of my life in less comfortable conditions, but that didn't mean I liked it. I looked at Spike and marveled that his hair looked perfect after a night on the cot. One of the benefits of being undead I guess.

He saw me looking at him and said, "So you were hired to nab me because of that Chinese Slayer? I thought her family had given up after Dru and I killed those ninja chaps at that World's Fair in the 30's."

"Well the Chinese have a long memory," I replied. " I'm sure at least a few people over there still know about my part in the Boxer Rebellion."

"Get out, I didn't see you anywhere. Off course I wasn't really there that long. Didn't have much reason to stay after I killed the Slayer and Angel went back to being a good little nancy boy. It wasn't as much fun when you couldn't understand the pleading of your victims." 

"May I ask a question, Spike?"

"Go ahead."

"Now that you've gotten your soul back, are you sorry for all the people you killed?"

"I didn't sulk for 100 years like that brooding poof Angel, but the shock of getting my soul back and remembering all my victims nearly drove me mad. That's probably what allowed the First to take control of me. The can't-hurt-humans-chip in my head forced me to take control of my feelings before I got my soul back-well all my feelings except for one notable exception. That's probably the only thing that's keeping me from screaming my head off twenty four hours a day now."

"I know how is to remember the people you've killed," I said. "And I don't have the excuse of not having a soul." 

There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence that I broke by saying, "So there's another vampire with a soul out there?"

"Yeah Angel. He sired Drusilla who in turn sired me. Got cursed by gypsies. He didn't want his soul back, but I did. It was my choice."

"Look," I said, "What I did to you wasn't personal, it was just a job. If I knew seven weeks ago what I know now, I wouldn't have taken that commission."

"Think nothing of it. Anyone would want to punish the person I used to be. At least I didn't bite you."

"Good thing you didn't. My blood is poisonous to any living thing. Found that out when I tried to give a transfusion to someone I really cared about it and it killed them."

"Ok," he said. "Look, I'm sorry about tripping your mate and getting him killed."

"He would have died anyway," I said climbing the stairs and not looking forward to the long wait outside the bathroom. "You just prevented us from killing more of the black robes."

Outside the bathroom Anya and I waited in silence. Finally she said, "You are the only available and attractive man in the house I haven't had a previous relationship with. I am open to the idea of having organisms with you." She saw the harried look on my face and continued, "That is if you are open to the idea of sharing consensual sexual activity with me."

"I'm not looking for a relationship right now and I don't want to step on Xander's toes," I told her, "but I'll certainly keep it in mind." At that moment Kennedy finally came out of the bathroom. I saw my chance for escape and bolted in there. Anya was an attractive woman, but she had way too much baggage, even for a two-thousand year old guy like me. 

A couple of days later I was helping Dawn with a Hebrew translation and talking about my experiences in the killhouse when I saw Buffy come back home from work at the high school.

"So your body healed the knife wounds and you woke up, but you were buried and didn't have any air, so you died again?" Dawn asked. "Major league freakout time."

"Yeah its no picnic. About a thousand years ago I got trapped in a miles long underground river. I lost track of how many times I would float up to an air bubble, revive, and then drown again as the current swept me back under the water."

"Too bad scuba tanks hadn't been invented then," she said. "Anyway, what happened to the bodies of all those Bringers you and your men killed?

"I'm not sure. The First must have some way of disposing of them. If they had simply carried the bodies out the house, then they would have moved the bodies of me and my team too. Excuse me for a minute," I said getting up from the study table, " I need to talk with your sister."

"No problemo. I'll be right here doing my mystic homework and if I'm real lucky, my actual school homework too."

I walked into the kitchen where Buffy was shaking the crumbs out of a cookie box. 

"I need to talk with you about something, Buffy."

"Talk on, McDuff," she said.

"I'm supposed to report to my employer at least once a week. Right now he's probably getting worried, but soon he may start trying to find out what happened to me and my team. He might even send another team to finish the job."

"What can we do about it?"

"If I send him a box of vampire dust and a note saying that Spike killed my team and wounded and left me with no choice but to stake him, it might satisfy my principal. Or at least buy us some time. I won't ask for the rest of my commission."

"Sounds like a plan-I'll get some fresh dust for you tonight," she said while opening a box of macaroni and cheese. "Will they be able to do that CSI DNA thing with the dust and tell if its Spike or not?"

"Probably not conclusively unless they somehow got a sample of Spike's DNA. I'll ask Willow about the scientific and magical angles to this, but to be on the safe side try to stake a male vamp of European extraction."

"Hey that's racial profiling-oh darn--I forgot Dawn slayed the microwave," she said while pouring water into a pot. "Guess I'll have to use the stove."

"There's another thing," I said. I know you can't completely trust me, but I want to help you fight the First Evil."

"Why do you want to do that?"

"The First has pissed me off. And its not often I encounter people and causes I believe in. Its hard to be passionate about anything after two thousand years of living, but I'm passionate about this."

"I can accept that," she replied while pouring the macaroni in the pot. "Continue to help with the translations and research and maybe you could start helping train the Potentials too. A guy like you is bound to have a few old school moves you can show us."

"Good. Hopefully I'll see you take down the First before I meet my maker again."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Over the next several months I settled into a routine of training, translation, and tension. Kennedy and I soon took over the bulk of time spent training the potentials. In the classic military tradition she tore down the young girls and I helped build them back up as fighters. Andrew called us "Sgt. Hartman and Obi Wan." We worked the Potentials up from general fitness to traditional Slayer techniques and then concentrated on decapitation moves after Buffy had her vision about the thousands of Turok-Han waiting for us.

We kept them busy and tired as much as we could so they wouldn't focus on being afraid all the time. That didn't prevent Chloe from killing herself, but it did seem to help most of the girls. Kennedy and I kept them so tired that the Potentials saw Buffy and Spike's specialized training sessions as a treat. Staking an ordinary vampire was much more fun than doing pushups.

In the evenings I often assisted Dawn, Willow, and Giles in translations of different materials. I knew several languages they weren't very strong in. I had always been blessed with a facility for learning and retaining languages and over two thousand years I had picked up many. I spent a lot of time teaching languages like Turkish and Greek to Dawn. She picked up languages faster than I did and had a real love for them. For me languages were tools to help get what I wanted, but they were more than that to Dawn. She had a real future with languages--assuming that she or anyone in Sunnydale lived to have a future in anything.

I also helped some of the Potentials with language barriers. Most of them had at least a working knowledge of English but Giles found a Chinese Potential named Chao-Ahn that didn't have any English. I was the only one in the house who knew her native Cantonese. Happily I was able to start translating for her before Giles started using his horrid flashcards showing bloody scenes of vampires and their victims. She was lactose intolerant and I had never liked ice cream that much, so she and I would get a doughnut while the other girls got ice cream on trips to the mall food court. We would talk about her home province, which I had visited once.

There were many sources of tension over those months. Some of that stress was financial. The girls ate as much as you would think a small army could and most of them hadn't been able to bring many clothes with them. Giles and Buffy helped with the extra expenses but it would take time to get full access to all the hidden accounts of the Watchers and her job was barely enough to take care of herself and Dawn. In the meantime I dipped into several of my accounts to furnish food and clothing for the Potentials. Over the last five centuries I had set up stable storehouses and bank holdings of artwork, crafts, smaller furniture, and books. If there looked to be trouble in a city or country where one storehouse was located, I would have the contents moved to a less troubled place and hire other people to watch it for me. After the contents had aged two or three hundred years, I would retrieve and sell off a cache and then invest the proceeds in very stable accounts. I always lost items to decay, theft, and vandalism, but the inflation of value from the surviving items more than made up for that. With a few exceptions, I had never lived extravagantly and I occasionally came into unexpected windfalls over the centuries, so I had a tidy fortune to live off. 

Another source of tension was the kind of outrageous things that everyone assured me always happened in Sunnydale. This included the fear that Giles might actually be dead and that the First had taken his form. Happily this didn't turn out to be true, but it was a bit of a shock to see Xander, Anya, Dawn, and Andrew tackle Giles as the Watcher and I sat around the campfire in the deseret. Seeing Willow in a man's body and the pain Spike's misfiring chip caused him also caused their share of tension. It was a shock to see Xander trussed up over the seal in the high school basement. Fortunately his demon date-girl didn't do much damage since Robin Wood and I cut him down before a Turok-Han could rise out of the seal. But the "exchange student" demon from the shadow realm broke my leg before it ran off. Fortunately Spike was able to kill it and bring it back to the portal so we could get Buffy back. I was back on my feet and training Potentials in a couple of days.

Andrew caused his fair share of tension too, especially when he started carrying around a video camera. After several warnings, I finally had to physically threaten him to stop him from filming me. I couldn't afford to have my face on footage that following generations might see. Plastic surgery wouldn't work because of my healing powers, so I had to remain inconspicious throughout the ages. Despite his many annoyances, Andrew did amuse me sometimes, although I would never show it and he did start taking more responsibility for his actions after his tears shut down the seal.

Seeing Spike put on his "game face" and going berserk after being triggered in the basement caused all my old doubts about him to resurface despite recently fighting other vampires by his side in an alley. By the way Giles and Wood were talking as I left the basement, I knew they were going to do something. But I didn't say anything. The day after Wood provoked Spike into a fight, Buffy gathered everyone in her living room and played the "Early One Morning" song that was Spike's trigger. Spike wasn't affected by it, so there wouldn't be any more discussion about his reliability, but I wagered that doubts would still remain in most people's minds. 

The next big ripple was the arrival of Faith, the other Slayer. I saw the less than warm reception she got in the house. After she talked to Spike, she had asked me, "So what's your story?"

"Just your average immortal mercenary fighting on the side of good for once."

"A man with a sketchy past who doesn't have first-hand knowledge about my sketchy past, I think I'm starting to like you," she had said.

I didn't get to talk much with Faith for awhile after our introduction, but I heard she got friendly with Spike. The next night the Potentials were winding down their caffeine buzz's from our trip to Starbucks when we got word that the new Potential in the hospital had regained consciousness and told her story. The plan to assault the vineyard that Buffy outlined for us smelled like a trap and gave me an unsettling feeling in my gut, but I didn't have any better ideas, so I went along with everyone else.

I felt a savage glee in my heart when the Bringers finally attacked. I buried my axe up to the hilt in one of their chests and then slit another one's throat with my gerber. Looking around, I saw that everyone else was doing well too. I was proud that our training was paying off. But that feeling curdled in my gut when Caleb appeared, taunted Buffy for a minute, and then knocked her halfway across the big storage room with his first punch. Then he asked, "So what else you got?" and Spike stepped up. Caleb traded a few blows with the vampire and sent him crashing into some wine barrels. I went for Caleb next and got a blocked knife thrust, punch to the face, disarm, and stabbing in the stomach with my own knife for my trouble. The next thing I knew Amanda was helping me out the door. We all were all beaten and bruised, but Rona had a broken arm, Xander had a gouged out eye, and Molly and Diane were dead. Later as I sat in the basement and healed, I thought that things looked about as bleak as they could get. I was wrong.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

My stomach puncture healed, but my heart felt wounded. The First started visiting me in the forms of various people I had known through the ages. It was bad enough to see fallen comrades and enemies, but the sight of Lida, my long dead viking princess, was almost more than I could take. I went upstairs and actually struck up a conversation with Andrew to try and take my mind off the First's ghostly presence. True to form, Andrew asked me an annoying question, 

"On a scale of one to ten, with the Highlander Immortals being ten, a Slayer five, and a human one, how would you rate the speed of your healing power?"

"I would have to say a five because from the stories I've heard Slayers seen to heal slight to moderate injuries faster than me, but they seem to have more trouble with massive trauma and near death injuries like gun-shot wounds and comas. I heal everything at the same pace no matter how bad it is. "

"Okay, but I was wondering how do you account for the fact that the First hasn't appeared as you although you have technically died many....." he was asking when Giles and Willow brought the police files back to the house. Grateful for the interruption, I helped Dawn dig into the research for some trace of Caleb's past activities. We eventually picked the account of the deaths at the church up north in Gilroy as the best lead to investigate. Giles spotted Caleb's symbol in photograph of the site and sent Spike and Andrew to investigate. 

Thankful to be free of Andrew's questions for awhile, I went out to the grocery store to do some shopping for the night's meal. Shortly after I left the house and starting walking down the sidewalk, I heard a car engine start and then rev up and take off at full speed. I turned around to the sight of the car coming straight at me. I ran for the porch of a neighbor's house, but it was too far away and the car coming too fast. I turned my head back towards the car and time froze for a second with the car right on me and then the next thing I remember I was lying in a bed, staring up at the ceiling.

I tried to figure out who had run me over and why. It didn't seem like the First and the Bringer's style. It could be people sent by my former employer or some other military type I had pissed off over the years, but they would have shot me. About an hour later Giles came in to check on me and provided an answer. 

It seems the driver of the car had hit a brick column after he hit me and sent my body flying against the side of a house. The driver hadn't been wearing his seat belt and his older model mustang didn't have an airbag, so he had burst through the windshield and fatally cracked his skull against the remains of the brick column. Giles had checked the body and found a Brotherhood of the Lamb tattoo on his wrist. He had also found a notebook detailing my movements for the past few weeks. The last few pages of it were filled with "Must Kill The Beast" written over and over. Gile's working theory was that my watcher had "gone hellmouthy" and decided to kill me instead of just keeping track of my movements. Either the Brotherhood had gotten better at surveillance to escape my notice for so long or they had lost track of me and just recently picked up the scent. I would be willing to wager on the latter.

I tried to get out of bed, but my legs didn't want to work right. Giles thought that my pelvis had been shattered. I hadn't actually "died," but my injuries would have been catastrophic for a normal person. It would take awhile to heal. Luckily I had retrieved a medical kit and some other supplies from the safe house that my team was using, so the pain was a dull throb instead of the roaring torrent it could be. I asked about what happened with the police and people who lived in the house that had been hit, but he said that thankfully just about everyone else had evacuated Sunnydale and that no one had paid any notice to the wreck. I asked what had been happening while I was out, and Giles gave me some very evasive answers. 

I stayed in the bed and healed over the next day or so, but could slowly move by the time they brought a badly battered Faith back from the abortive raid on the tunnel arsenal. She took my place in Buffy's bed and I slowly made my way down stairs to the make-shift Potential hospital ward. I had picked up some battlefield medicine over the years, so I helped Anya and Andrew tend to the Potentials and watched over them while the pair went to raid the abandoned hospital for proper medical supplies.

While the Potentials had a lot of wounds, none of them seemed to life-threatening or non-treatable with the supplies on hand. So they healed as Buffy went to search for the origin of her new scythe and Willow helped them along with some restorative spells. Later Spike slammed the front door and went down to the basement in a huff shortly before Buffy came back. She told us the good news about killing Caleb, gave us a folder full of papers concerning the First, and went down the stairs to see Spike.

"The Study Buddies" as we had begun thinking of ourselves looked over the papers. They contained accounts of the First being able to imbue the most supremely evil and twisted humans with superhuman strength that needed to be replenished from time to time. That explained Caleb. It also contained reports that indicated that the Turok-Han, while stronger than ordinary vampires, weren't normally as strong or fast as the first one Buffy had faced. It stood to reason that the first Turok-Han had been enhanced somehow. Hopefully the First Evil wouldn't be able to do that with the rest of its vampire horde. It did seem that the First would be able to enter and influence everyone in the world after it got to the surface with its army. The Wolfram and Hart letterhead on the papers gave us some concern, but the new information felt genuine.

The First didn't visit me that night, but it did visit Buffy. I later found out it had provided Buffy with the inspiration for creating the new Slayers. The new plan felt like a breath of fresh air to everyone. For awhile I'd constantly had the image in the back of my mind of the First reviving me over and over again like it had done with Spike. Buffy made me forget about that image. That's what good leaders do.

Later I caught Buffy alone and talked about something I knew she would probably not agree to, but felt I had to put forward."

"That was some speech, Buffy."

"Really-as good as the 'we few, we happy few' speech?"

"Yeah-And I was there for the original St. Crispin's day speech before Shakespeare jazzed it up," I said while suppressing a grin. "But I wanted to talk about something else too."

"Go ahead, shoot," she said.

"Well that's just it, maybe its time we started shooting and blowing things up," I said as she got a concerned look on her face.

"I don't know about that...."

"You're the one who said we need to change the rules...."

"But my instinct is telling me we don't need that Rambo stuff," she said with her arms crossed. "I have been known to take care of problems with rocket launchers every now and again, but I've also learned to trust my Slayer instinct. There may be something down the road that we'll need that stuff for, but we need to get medieval with the First."

"Well I'm very good at medieval," I said with a grin on my face.


	10. Chapter 10 and Epilogue

Chapter Ten

That night was among the most restless in my long life. I tried playing some Dungeons and Dragons with the rest of the gang, but my unfamiliarity with the rules combined with my butterflies made me do poorly, so I quit and played some Blackhawk Down on Willow's laptop. Blowing things up with my m203 nade launcher made me feel much calmer. Everyone else had gone to bed long before I did. I stayed upstairs to give Spike and Buffy some privacy. I knew what it was like to have "we're all going to die in the morning" sex.

Early that morning I went out to the porch for some fresh air. Spike was standing in the pre-dawn shadows smoking a cigarette. 

"Want one?" he asked.

I'd never had a real taste for tobacco, but over the past few centuries I had smoked countless pipes, cigarettes and cigars while awaiting battle with comrades in arms.

"Sure," I said, taking one from pack before he lit it for me. "I would make a 'You know these things will kill you' joke, but its not true in our case and I'm sure you've already gotten your share of them."

"Yeah I told Faith the same thing awhile back."

"Did you two ever....you know?" I asked.

"No but she and Wood did. Would have served him right if she had snapped him in two in the throes of passion. Its just my bloody luck to be hunted down by the families of the two Slayers I killed."

"I'll make sure the Chinese family gets the message to back off from you," I said.

"Thanks mate, but I have the feeling that won't be necessary," he said as he stubbed out his cigarette and went back inside.

I didn't say a word as I walked downs the halls of the high school and got the assignment to cover the North Hall with Anya and Andrew. I didn't think much of our chances of making it out alive. I had coaxed a few grudging training sessions out of them and knew they were the two weakest of the whole group. I retrieved my weapon from the cache and did some warm-up exercises as Anya and Andrew talked. 

I felt better after Anya got fired up thinking about bunnies, but Andrew's "I've got swimmer's ear" battle cry left much to be desired. My own cry was "Come on, you want me, your going to have to kill me-A LOT."

The Turok-Han were fast and used weapons, which was something we hadn't seen before. But they weren't very good with the weapons. I got a rhythm going and decapitated three in a row with my big axe before one of them got a strike in on my arm. I ducked the follow-up and pushed it away with the end of the axe and then took it down with a swing to the chest and took its head to finish.

I saw one coming from behind Anya and I rushed towards the ex-demon while taking a passing swing at the back of another vamp's knees as it was attacking Andrew. I was just in time to block a downward thrust that would have broken her back, but another vamp stabbed me in the side. I kept the vamp busy by grabbing the blade with both hands and Anya turned it to dust with a stake through the back and to the heart. Then it was over.

Anya and Andrew helped me get to the bus and put me in a seat near the front. Faith was the last one on to board. 

"Where is Buffy? Giles asked in a hushed tone. 

"Talking with Spike. I don't know if she's coming," Faith answered.

"We got a world of hurt coming down on us," said Robin as he clutched his wounds in the driver's seat. 

"She would be here by now if she was coming. Drive," said Giles with an ashen look on his face.

The bus was silent as we pulled away from the school and zoomed through town. I turned back to look at Dawn who was gazing out the back window. I wondered what it must be like for her to lose Buffy again. Then I heard a thump on the roof and Dawn got up in her seat. My heart soared when I realized it must be Buffy.

I just sat in my seat for a minute after the bus stopped. Then I got up to go take a look at the destruction we had left in our wake. As I passed his seat, Andrew said to himself, "Why didn't I die?"

"Because Anya and I decided that using you as a human shield wasn't an effective tactic," I said as I mussed up his hair.

As I limped towards where Buffy and the others were standing, Anya took my by the shoulders and said, "You were incredible. You saved my life." She gave me a peck on the cheek and walked towards the others. Xander looked my way and nodded his head in thanks.

I had seen some impressive ruins in my time, but Sunnydale took the cake. The green "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign fell into the abyss and somehow that made me think of Spike. I was still thinking of him when Dawn asked, "What are we going to do now?" I had no idea, but sadly I knew one thing I wouldn't have to do.

Epilogue

Several days after my return from the African recruiting trip with Xander and Rona, I was striding past a flustered secretary and into a Mr. Chang's office.

"Well Lange, did you decide to try and collect the balance of your pay after all?" the young Chinese man asked.

"As a friend of mine would say, 'you can bugger your pay," I said as I reached over his desk and grasped his tie and pulled him towards me. "I know your putting together another snatch team. I'm here to warn you."

"Warn me of what?" he gasped.

"Warn you that if Spike or I die or disappear, then you'll have at least one pissed off Slayer and the full resources of Wolfram and Hart after you."

"Why are you protecting the vampire?"

"Because he has a soul now and he played in big part in saving the world awhile back," I said as I released my grip and he feel back into his cushioned chair. "But mostly because he was a guy in the foxhole with me, even if it did turn out to be a really big foxhole."

Author's Notes

The inspiration for this story came after I ran across a Casca timeline on the Wold Newton Chronology Central webpage as I was doing research for a Tarzan Drabble I was writting. Reading the Casca timeline brought back pleasant memories from the Casca books I had read when I was younger. I began to think that having Casca interact with the Scoobys would be an interesting experience. Originally I meant to have the story end soon after "Showtime," but I got to thinking that if Casca was going to be around for the final battle in "Chosen," then there would be a good chance that he could save Anya. 

That appealed to me and then I realized that Casca could also be a character in the "Alien Apocalypse" storyline I was starting to plot. So essentially that story will be a sequel to this story, although you won't really have to read this one to understand the next one. "Alien Apocalypse" will be a crossover with the John Ringo "Legacy of the Alldenata" books which deal with the invasion of Earth by the Posleen. This story will also have minor crossovers with characters from the Stargate and Drew Carey tv shows as well as the VisionQuest and American Splendor movies. It will cover nine years and the material written about in four books, but I hope to put it out on a regular basis. 


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